Don't Look Back (11 page)

“Merchandise,” Jay said. “So romantic.”

“I liked you better,” Eve said to Will, “before you started talking.”

“I think it goes downhill once that initial thrill is over,” Jay said. “And you’re committed. Together. Once you own someone, you start to despise them.”

“The trick is,” Will said, “not to own them.”

“Thanks, breeder. I read that fortune cookie, too.”

“You learned to read?”

“Gay people are generally literate. It comes packaged with the superior fashion sense.”

“That’s
another
thing,” Eve said, losing traction on some of her consonants. “When did we get so fucking
glib
? I’m sick of irony, of flip, of snark. When did everyone get so desperate not to be not jaded?”

The others took a beat, either to unpack the double negative or because her rant was even more of a non sequitur than she’d thought.

“Are you referring to me?” Jay said. “I thought I was being clever.”

“Everyone just chill,” Will said, laughing.

“No, no. This is good.” Claire pointed the empty bottle at Eve. “You wanna be earnest? You first, then. Be earnest.”

Oops.

Eve wet her lips. “About what?”

“You know.” Claire’s eyes held that wicked gleam they got. “Your deepest darkest.”

A challenge.

Eve searched for words but felt her insides churning, the room going slightly on tilt. She’d gotten drunk and opened her mouth and now couldn’t back it up. The silence stretched out.

Talk. Just fucking talk.

“Look,” Will said. “We don’t have to do this.”

“It’s fine,” Claire said. “You don’t have to rescue her. I’ll go. You can ask me anything.” She held up a cautionary finger, then pointed to her leg braces. “But not about this. And here’s why. I’m here on this trip because
I’m
not a disease. People want to know so they can label me neatly, slot me into place beneath some heading.” She glared out from under a fringe of dirty-blond hair. “I’m not gonna let you. So ask something else.”

There was a beat, and then Jay said, “Okay. What’s with the heavy-duty dive watch? I assume you don’t dive given your not-to-be-asked-about medical condition.”

“This?” Claire held up her wrist, regarded the watch face like an adversary. Then she smirked at it. “This is still-alive time. My-legs-mostly-work time. I-can-take-care-of-myself time. That’s the only kind of time I keep now.” She looked at their faces, then cracked up. “
Man,
you guys look sober all of a sudden. Don’t worry. I won’t croak on
this
trip.”

Eve tried to loosen her face but was having trouble.

“C’mon,” Claire said. “Who’s next? I’m assuming one of you boys, since Eve lost her capacity for—”

“My dad,” Eve said, “was a musician. He could play the trumpet with a cigarette sticking up out of his knuckles like a rooster comb.”

Will drew his head back, seemingly surprised by her rush of words.

Jay gave a nod. “Great little flair,” he said.

“It wasn’t flair. It was
magic.
” She smiled at the memory. “He wasn’t around much when I was growing up. Out on tour a lot, and then one tour, he just … didn’t come home. So I married safe, or so I thought. Stable.” She laughed at herself, laughed hard and true.

“Dads are swell,” Claire said. “Mine used to make me get up from dinner every time he wanted something. Glass of water. Fetch the paper. I had brothers, but no. And if I spoke up? ‘Sorry to step on your toes, Gloria Steinem.’ I learned young to do what I wanted on my own.”

“I guess I learned the opposite,” Eve said. “As pathetic as that sounds.”

Her nails were clicking her shot glass, playing it like a flute. She stopped. They were still looking at her.

“I saw a picture,” she said. “She’s beautiful. With the hair, the accent. She’s got this …
freshness
in her smile. And me, I let myself get lost.
Buried.
He didn’t do that to me. Ms. Pilates Accountant didn’t do that to me.
I
did.” A stick bug crept across the floor, summited Eve’s shoe, then ambled on its way. “That’s why I came here, I guess. Same reason Theresa Hamilton did. To find myself. If I’m honest…” A deep breath. “If I’m honest, I would’ve left me, too.”

There was a silence, long enough to be uncomfortable.

Claire held up the empty bottle, gazed at her reflection, made a noise in the back of her throat. “He found someone better.”

Will kept his gaze steady on Eve. “I doubt that.”

Eve looked away so he couldn’t see how pleased she was at the remark.

“My confession?” Jay said. “I don’t like Lady Gaga.”

Their laughter was interrupted by a brisk tapping on the door.

Sue entered, an odd contraption strapped to her head, tugging up her chin. It resembled a jock strap. “Could you keep it down a little? We’re trying to sleep.”

Jay covered his mouth with his hand. “
What
is on your face?”

Sue’s own hand rose in chagrin, hovering near her cheek. “It’s a face bra,” she said, a touch haughtily. “It’s intended to reverse aging.”

“What’s wrong with aging?” Claire asked.

But Sue had already retreated. They waited for the footsteps to fade, then burst out laughing.

“Okay,” Will said. “Remember what Aristotle said: ‘When someone busts out a face bra, it’s time to call it a night.’”

Claire thunked down the empty bottle. Jay hoisted her to her feet, held her steady as she locked her leg braces. For once she accepted the help. Jay stooped so she could sling her arm across his broad shoulders. “Come on, lady. I’ll drag you to your hut.”

He paused in the doorway, looked back. “Will, why don’t you go back to Eve’s hut and critique the window dressings?”

“Cute,” Will said.

“Or we could work on your jazz hands,” Eve said.

Will shook his head, fought a grin. “This is how it’s gonna go now, isn’t it?”

“Yes,”
Jay and Eve said at the same time.

Jay stepped out into the night, all but carrying Claire.

Will and Eve, alone. He shifted his weight, kicked at the floor. She scratched her neck.

Tell him. Tell him what you want.

Right now. Just go ahead.

“Look,” Eve said. “I’m not old, but I’m old enough that my body feels …
lived in.
I have this knot in my shoulder that gets better and worse, but I know now it’s never gonna go away.”

Will blinked a few times. “O
kay
.”

“I have a kid and a mortgage, and I drive swim practice four times a week. I don’t want games.”

“What
do
you want?”

You know. You know what you want. For once in your life, do it.

She was just drunk enough to listen.

She hooked his neck and stepped forward into him, her mouth finding his, tasting again the flame of the mezcal. He was the perfect height, taller but not too tall, so she could tilt her face to his but keep her feet flat on the ground. She sucked his bottom lip, pulled away, felt something wild and dangerous dancing in her stomach, flicking at her insides.

“Okay,” he said. “Right.”

She led him by the hand down the bamboo path to her hut, and they kissed again in the doorway and then a few steps into the room. Hard-shelled insects pinged off the walls, and outside a hunting bird gave a series of triumphant hoots. They shed their clothes, slipped through the mosquito netting, fell into the enclosed safety of the bed. And then they were intertwined, their bodies slick with humidity, all mouths and hands and hips until they lay spent, panting.

Will rested his cheek on the slope of her stomach, his head rising with her breaths. “You’re quite an athlete.”

She made a soft noise of amusement. “Not since high-school soccer.”

“Mmm.” He yawned, curled his back, his cheek damp where it met her flesh. His words, little more than an exhausted mumble. “Were you any good?”

The room grew hazy at the dark periphery, whether from the afterglow, the late hour, or the tail end of the mezcal.

“Decent. I was fast, so I got slide-tackled a lot.” Her blinks grew longer and longer. “I wasn’t the best, but I kept getting up. Kept … getting up.”

Before she drifted off, a final thought caught the last ray of consciousness.

Maybe that girl’s still in there.

Chapter 15

He stood outside the window of the jungle hut. Peering in. His face inches from the mesh. His feet shoulder width apart. Solid. Prepared. As still as a carving of stone. He breathed the hot air. He stared at the sight inside, just beyond the sill. Through the box of netting, bare flesh lay spread across the mattress. Limbs tangled.

The woman from the ruins. A man as well. Her partner.

Breathing heavily. Asleep.

Turning the machete in his hands, he considered. They wore no rings. Unmarried. Like animals, these Americans were. The woman’s flank was exposed, a firm rise, still ruddy from exertion.

The cicadas chirped and the wind blew, and he watched.

Moths fluttered and a mosquito whined, and he watched.

Leaves whispered and bullfrogs sang, and he watched.

The woman stirred, draping a porcelain-white arm across her face. Her bangs sweat-pasted to her forehead.

He flicked the machete’s tip beneath his fingernails to clear the dirt.

Flick. Flick.

A hot coal glowed in his stomach. Not desire, no, but a higher love. He would love to educate them, to let his hand be guided by what was true.

Flick. Flick.

But no. This was the wrong hut and the wrong time, and his mission did not allow for such distractions.

He drifted silently up the bamboo walkway, catching shadows even in the darkness. His sandaled feet chose their spots carefully. Not a creak. Not a crackle of twig underfoot.

He entered the adjacent hut.

There the large man slept. The one who had come to spy on him in the canyon.

He was shirtless, with gym-honed muscles. The most significant physical threat of the group, certainly. A man best caught off guard.

Or asleep.

The door of the tall wardrobe hung open. Inside on a shelf rested the hat. An embroidered
S
decorated with a compass star. He eased silently across the hut, reached up, lifted the cap. Beneath it, folded pants. A pocket bulged. He pulled the pants from the shelf, unsnapped the tab.

The big man murmured something in his sleep and rolled over, hugging his pillow.

Stop. Freeze. Transform again to a carving of stone. His chest neither rose nor fell. He didn’t blink.

Once the big man’s breathing grew regular again, he tilted the fabric, and something square and hard slid into his palm.

A camera.

Even in the darkness, he read the white label easily:
THERESA HAMILTON
.

The camera gave a slight whir as it turned on. He clicked swiftly through the pictures until he reached the ones of him in his canyon. Gripping the woman’s arm. And then at night.

His fear confirmed. The man, like Theresa Hamilton, had seen.

So be it.

He lifted the machete, tested the edge with the pad of his thumb. His breathing neither quickened nor slowed. He firmed his grip, used the tempered steel blade to part the mosquito netting.

The man was sprawled out, his neck bared. The angle direct.

His feet picked up a tremble in the floating floorboards. Someone approaching. He took three swift steps backward, vanishing into the dark space between wardrobe and door.

The other man entered. The sexual partner of the woman. Passing through the doorway so close that his shirtsleeve nearly brushed against the intruder’s own shoulder. The man trudged forward, fell through the netting onto the other bed.

The big man shifted, groaned, rubbed at an eye. “Have fun, Will?”

“A gentleman never tells. And
yes.
”

Within seconds they were asleep.

But he waited still. He watched them and he breathed and he studied the space between the beds and rehearsed. Backswings. Trajectories. Pivots. Like a dance.

But they were two able-bodied men, and the timing would be better.

A sideways slide and he was gone from the little hut.

As though he had never been there at all.

SUNDAY

Chapter 16

As they parked their mud-dripping quads and stepped into the sloped village of Santa Marta Atlixca, the riot of colors seemed hurled down by a divine hand to brighten the mountainside. The humble houses ranged from sunshine yellow to Mexican pink. Green, blue, and orange flags were strung across the sole road, decorations for an upcoming feast in honor of a patron saint whose name Eve could neither recognize nor pronounce. A constant buzz of movement hummed all around the
zócalo,
the public square connecting a ramshackle school, an out-of-place-looking kiosk, and an open-air market shaded erratically by tarps.

Neto swung off his burro—they’d been one ATV short, and the bombastically named Ruffian had trotted gamely along the trails, failing to keep pace. The tour members remained in a self-conscious huddle, squinting and gawking. Eve took off her sunglasses, marred with the smudges left by splattered bugs from the ride, and wiped the lenses on her shirt. She glanced across at Will, caught him staring at her. He dipped his head and grinned shyly, the usual confidence giving way to schoolboy bashfulness. She liked him all the more for it.

“You are lucky,” Neto announced to the group, resting a hand on the wide horn of Ruffian’s cowboy saddle, “to see the pueblo so busy.” He gestured at the creamy gray clouds crowding the horizon. “When the wet season gets going, everyone will clear out and head off to their
milpas
—the little cleared fields of their families—in safer parts of the mountain range to weather the storms.”

The village was so bustling, so vibrant, it was nearly impossible to imagine it abandoned. Kids ran and bounced across a dirt soccer field. A girl who couldn’t have been older than four toddled by, carrying a naked baby with mind-blowing ease. Perched on the edge of a bench, two mustached men wrangled a grand bamboo framework of spinning wheels and crudely shaped religious images, tapping firework flash powder into the tubes, readying it for the celebration to come. Beside them a man with beef-jerky skin cautiously deposited fighting cocks into individual crates, packing them onto his pickup truck, probably for a tournament. As the birds pranced and preened, sharp metal spurs attached to their spindly legs glinted through the slats in the crates.